Workers at more than 70 fast food chain restaurants planned a walkout
for Thursday in what organizers are saying is the largest-ever protest
of its kind. According to CNN Money,
the coalition of striking workers includes employees of McDonald’s,
Wendy’s, Pizza Hut, KFC and other major chains, as well as community and
clergy groups dedicated to improving the lives of low-wage workers in
the mostly non-unionized field of restaurant work.

Jonathan Westin, executive director of New York Communities for
Change, one of the main organizing groups behind the strike, told CNN
that dozens of workers walked off the job at the Times Square McDonald’s
and that the Flatbush Avenue Burger King in Brooklyn barely opened its
doors on time Thursday morning due to the number of workers who are on
strike.

The workers are asking for a minimum pay of $15 an hour and the right
to organize and collectively bargain without fear of firing or
retaliation. Currently, the median wage for fast food workers in New
York City is $9 an hour, placing even full-time workers at an average
income of $18,500 per year, well under the U.S. Census Bureau’s
threshold for poverty-level income, $23,000 per year for a family of
four.

Many
workers are part time and receive no benefits. Some tell stories of
having to skip meals in order to meet the expense of transportation to
and from work. Workers who have participated in protests and attempted
to organize in the past, however, say that they have faced retaliation
in the form of reduced hours and pay cuts.